The exemplary embodiments generally relate to multiplex communications and to interactive video distribution systems and, more particularly, to channel assignment techniques, to user-requested video program system, and to video distribution system components.
Boutique content is a problem for network operators. Boutique content is requested by only a few subscribers. Some content, such as CNN or ESPN, have broad popularity. Other content, however, is less popular and only requested by a few subscribers. This lesser popular boutique content may potentially consume valuable multicast IP address space and rely on more time consuming multicast processes on behalf of a small number of subscribers who may be more effectively served via unicast mechanisms. Conversely, highly time-dependent boutique content may cause congestion events in the network as video servers attempt to satisfy video on demand requests of such boutique content at nearly the same time for a large number of subscribers. The cost of transport for this boutique content is seldom recovered, and the time required to join and leave such multimedia streams may exceed latency parameters necessary for an ordered Quality of Experience (QoE).
The typical solution to boutique congestion is more bandwidth. That is, network operators “throw bandwidth at the problem” by over-provisioning the network in order to accommodate bandwidth-intensive applications. As Internet Protocol video is contemplated as a service offering, the proper handling of streaming media in a general purpose transport network will be very difficult to achieve and/or expensive to solve through over-provisioning. What is needed, then, is an intelligent and novel solution to boutique content congestion.